Actionable Strategies to Enhance Your Learning Ability

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, fostering a robust learning ability is paramount. This article delves into actionable strategies designed to improve student engagement, build confidence, and enhance comprehension across diverse learning contexts. By addressing common fears, incorporating active learning techniques, and promoting metacognition, educators and learners alike can unlock their full potential.

Addressing Fears and Fostering a Safe Learning Environment

The classroom, while a space for intellectual growth, can also be a source of anxiety for students. The fear of failure and judgment can hinder engagement and impede learning. It is crucial to create a supportive environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and expressing their ideas.

Asking Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions are a powerful tool for encouraging participation, as they allow students to express their opinions and interpretations without the fear of being "wrong." Because open-ended questions can have multiple correct answers or valid perspectives, they can also generate more interesting discussions. These types of questions can also require students to be more diligent in their readings and homework as these questions require a deeper understanding than simply knowing a correct answer.

By starting with open-ended questions and then following up with more specific, fact-finding questions, instructors can both stimulate discussion and assess student comprehension. This approach helps refine, contextualize, and nuance responses, ensuring a deeper understanding of the material.

Probing Prior Knowledge

Before diving into new material, it is beneficial to gauge students' existing knowledge of the topic. Background-knowledge probes can help instructors tailor their lessons to address specific gaps and ensure that subsequent meetings of the course will better engage students, and can even generate discussion in the moment. This approach saves valuable time and ensures that instruction is targeted and relevant.

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Utilizing Ungraded or Credit-Upon-Completion Assignments

To encourage participation without the pressure of high-stakes assessment, consider incorporating ungraded or credit-upon-completion assignments. Short reflections on class material or participation in classroom discussions can easily be turned into credit-upon-completion components of a course. These types of informal assignments hold students accountable for doing work and can prepare students to think critically in advance of more important graded assessments without presenting a significant intellectual risk for them or a grading burden for instructors. These assignments hold students accountable for their work and promote critical thinking in a low-risk environment.

Embracing Active Learning Techniques

Active learning methods ask students to engage in their learning by thinking, discussing, investigating, and creating. Education research shows that incorporating active learning strategies into university courses significantly enhances student learning experiences. In class, students practice skills, solve problems, struggle with complex questions, make decisions, propose solutions, and explain ideas in their own words through writing and discussion. Timely feedback, from either the instructor or fellow students, is critical to this learning process.

Incorporating Student Discussion Time

Instead of relying solely on lectures, instructors should incorporate opportunities for student discussion. Instead of having students solve an example problem on their own, consider asking students to form small groups or try activities such as think-pair-share to work through it. In addition to boosting engagement, group discussions give students the opportunity to explain to others their reasoning and problem-solving processes, which helps promote metacognition. Small groups work equally well for discussing open-ended questions and problems with explicit solutions. These discussions allow students to articulate their reasoning, clarify their understanding, and learn from their peers.

Encouraging Peer Teaching and Modeling

When students begin to grasp a concept in a difficult lecture for the first time, they may feel like a light bulb has just turned on, bringing clarity to their understanding of a topic. This is a great opportunity to ask these students to explain it to the rest of the class and take other people’s questions, interrupting only to correct or clarify information. By explaining concepts to their peers, students solidify their own understanding and develop valuable communication skills.

Integrating Peer Review

Peer review can be a valuable tool for increasing engagement, students are most accepting when instructors inform them of the importance and potential benefits of participating in such activities. Take time to establish peer review norms and expectations, so that students can trust they will be treated with respect and be more open to feedback. Ask students to account for how and why they incorporated the feedback and when they did not. Consider how and when you give your feedback on student work so that it does not unintentionally undercut the peer review process. If your feedback comes after a draft that incorporates peer feedback, that is an opportunity for you to reinforce the value of that peer feedback by pointing to places where they successfully integrated the feedback or places where they should have. This process not only improves the quality of student work but also fosters a sense of community and shared responsibility.

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Benefits of Active Learning

Opportunities to process course material through thinking, writing, talking, and problem solving give students multiple avenues for learning. Applying new knowledge helps students encode information, concepts, and skills in their memories by connecting it with prior information, organizing knowledge, and strengthening neural pathways. Receiving frequent and immediate feedback helps students correct misconceptions and develop a deeper understanding of course material. Working on activities helps create personal connections with the material, which increases students’ motivation to learn. Regular interaction with the instructor and peers around shared activities and goals helps create a sense of community in the classroom. Instructors may gain more insight into student thinking by observing and talking with students as they work. Knowing how students understand the material helps instructors target their teaching in future lessons.

Designing for Diverse Learning Styles

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework which strives to capture the diversity of student learning preferences and is applicable to any field or subject. Consider the following strategies while designing learning activities to best reach students who may possess a variety of engagement styles. Recognizing that students learn in different ways is crucial for creating an inclusive and engaging learning environment.

Offering Multiple Versions of Activities and Assignments

Information is only accessible to students when it engages their cognition, so it is essential to give students both autonomy in choosing how to engage with the material as well as a diversity of methods for them to learn and assess their skills. Consider utilizing information from multiple types of sources or modalities when giving lectures or allowing students the freedom to choose different types of projects for a final assessment. By providing options for how students engage with the material, instructors can cater to different learning styles and preferences.

Promoting Metacognition and Reflection

Metacognition is useful for student learning and mastery as well as building and sustaining a motivation to learn. Consider providing students with feedback on key assignments as well as creating activities in which students can conduct self-assessment with a variety of different techniques. Exit tickets are a useful instructional activity that can be used for reflection. Encouraging students to reflect on their learning process is essential for developing self-awareness and promoting lifelong learning.

Emphasizing Course Objectives and Relevance

While all students appreciate understanding the significance or utility of their course material, some students especially benefit from continued reinforcement of course objectives to boost engagement. Assignments should allow learners to understand or restate the goal of the activity as well as offer relevant examples for how the information gained can be applied which connects to students’ backgrounds and interests. When students understand the purpose and relevance of their coursework, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated.

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Practical Tips for Implementation

Start small: Begin by incorporating one or two active learning strategies into your lessons.
Be transparent: Explain to students why you are using active learning techniques and how they will benefit them.
Provide clear instructions: Ensure that students understand the task and expectations for each activity.
Offer feedback: Provide timely and constructive feedback to help students learn from their mistakes.
Reflect on your practice: Regularly assess the effectiveness of your teaching strategies and make adjustments as needed.
Design activities around your learning outcomes, especially with topics students typically find confusing.
Be clear about how activities relate to learning outcomes since students do not always make that connection on their own.
Be aware that you will need to cut content from your lectures to make room for discussion and activities; review your lectures and remove the least important parts; also consider asking students to read before the class meets and take a low-stakes online quiz or complete an online discussion board post so that they come to class ready to learn more advanced topics.
Plan to pause your lecture 2 or more times for activities; these can be as simple as asking students to discuss their thoughts on a question with someone sitting next to them.
Use active learning consistently so students know what to expect in class.
Build-in accountability for individual and group work (offering participation points is one way to show your students that you value the activities and their participation); for example, ask students to answer polling questions, upload a photo of their worksheet to Canvas, or turn in an index card with a response to a short writing prompt at the end of class.
When students are working on an activity in class, it is helpful for you and/or your TAs to move around the classroom to answer questions and interact with students to learn more about how they are thinking; these interactions can inform ways to follow up after an activity with clarification or to highlight student ideas.
Be sure to offer timely feedback to students after an activity; in large classes, one option is for you to explain both the correct and incorrect answers (some students will have guessed).
Also, consider the value of peer feedback, such as in the form of a think-pair-share discussion with someone sitting near them.

Talking to Students About Active Learning

Many students are beginning to expect their classes should include some interaction and opportunities to practice, discuss, or apply what they are learning. The best way to ensure that you and your students have a positive experience with active learning is to be transparent about how you will use it and why.

On the first day of class:

Let students know that your course uses active learning and that they will be expected to participate (add this to your course description and syllabus too).
Explain why you are using active learning and how it will help them succeed in your class (connect it to skills they will need beyond Cornell).
Point them to the latest research on learning demonstrating that students learn more and earn higher grades with active learning (e.g., Deslauriers et al., 2019).
Use a quick icebreaker or two to help students become comfortable working with one another.
Introduce an active learning activity to set the expectation for an interactive class.

I.O.U. Remember, Organization, and Review

Generally, review is more effective when you are active.

Open book or closed book? Will you do problems and show your work? graded multiple choice? true-false? with pauses to “search for insight” just like you did in practice. If you finish early, check your work.

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